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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

This is a terrible article that just uncritically assumes the worst of the 'kids today!' stereotype (which has been around since Plato's time) as a starting premise. I know it's Sunday but I'm surprised to see such fluff high up on HN.

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“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

-Plato/Socrates (though incredibly likely this is apocryphal)

Apparently this was not Plato or Socrates. However, the author wrote it in 1909 so the point still stands!

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehaving-childre...

I mean, if we attribute this to the period during the Peloponnesian wars, the kids were definitely not alright. The generation of Athenians after Alcibiades definitely didn't do anything good, and Athens ultimately lost the war.

People cite the case of Socrates in this way and in my opinion therein lies the fluff. I suspect Socrates was, in fact, corrupting the youth, and the desire to execute him was probably well justified by the norms of that society.

Everything is cyclical. Just because things happen repeatedly doesn’t mean they’re “invalid.”

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